My Definition, Your Definition...

I'm appallingly late for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010. I'm a terrible person. But in a way, it's just as well I held off from posting. I was intending to trot out some third-rate crap about disabled women and feminism, but it's already been done better elsewhere. Instead I shall share an experience that occurred only last night, following the birthday party of a friend of TraumaBloke's.

Because it was getting late, and the party was a distance from the towns we and his mates had come from, we offered them our sofas to crash on - better than spending silly money on a cab home, and they could just get on a bus the following morning. Reasoning that this would ensure them access to a cup of tea and maybe a bacon sarnie, they agreed.

The drive home is uneventful, and we stop off at a supermarket for more beer - TraumaBloke couldn't drink at the party, but fully intends to do so at home. We get home, the lads crack open the beer, and pretty soon we're alternating between conversation and old arcade games on TB's laptop. I can't even remember how it came up, mostly because it was 1.30, but someone mentions something about my being disabled. One of the group - apparently unconvinced by the crutches and the painkillers - says "are you? Really, I mean, because I was watching you walk tonight and you seem to be walking like anyone else."

I may have written before on here about my refusal to limp just because that's what's expected of me. I've certainly written about the difficulty I've had in explaining to people that I walk reasonably well BECAUSE I have my crutch, and without it I'd struggle immensely. I have also written about good days and bad days, and my frustration over my inability to predict which will occur next. Safe to say, assertions like "well, you seem to move around okay" cause me to become very angry indeed, whether they come from a friend of my fiance's or from someone who's interviewing me for a job. It's not their place to say, and it's not my place to explain it to them.

Yet that's precisely what I had to do, and then go on to explain some other stuff. Like how today I could walk at a reasonable pace with my stick, because I have my stick, but on Monday I was struggling. Like how I take several kinds of strong neuroactive drugs, which take the edge off the symptoms but don't obliterate them entirely. Like the full case history of the five-and-a-half-year medical soap opera that my life became following my accident. And throughout the whole conversation, my interrogator kept repeating "but I just don't see you as an invalid. You just don't fit into my understanding of the word."

So, as so many times before, I went over the definition of disability as set down in the Disability Discrimination Act 1995:

The Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) 1995 defines a disabled person as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities.

It's pretty standard. There's not much wriggle room. It's the definition used in law, and will continue to be so even after the Equality Bill has come into force this October, because that legislation uses the same phrasing. It has been worded incredibly carefully, and will have been subject to a number of revisions to ensure utter clarity of meaning. Yet because it was not the definition in my friend's mind (because when he said "invalid", what he meant was "disabled person"), he could not convince himself that, in fact, I was talking utter sense and it was simply his definition which was at fault.

It's like people who have read a word but never heard it pronounced: when they say it wrong and someone corrects them, their pride forces them to return "well, that's how I say it!", as if, somehow, everyone gets to make up their own pronunciation of words already codified in dictionaries. The same is true of meanings; ultimately, many discussions (and arguments) that surround disability, or that are entered into by disabled people, will come down to arguing semantics. It's easier than admitting you don't really understand a word or a concept - just claim that your opponent has misunderstood the meaning, or has failed to grasp "what I understand" by the word.

Apparently, I am expected to accept that, in every legal sense and in the sense that everyone reading this will understand, I am disabled. In the sense of the word peculiar and unique to my friend, I'm not.

Would you be surprised if I were to report that his idea of an "invalid" is limited to someone who can only get around using a wheelchair, who needs to be washed, dressed and fed, and who doesn't go to parties and make attempts at witty conversation all night? Would you be shocked to hear that his reaction on learning I'd been issued a Blue Badge was to laugh and say "No, you don't need that!" It seems that, due to the televisual presence of Joey Deacon at key points in their youth, for a generation of otherwise right-thinking and intelligent people the only real "invalids" are those with a very narrow range of conditions and a very specific set of care needs.

But where does this leave Visually Impaired people, or the Deaf community? People with epilepsy or multiple schlerosis or sickle cell anaemia? What of those who are severely mentally ill, or people with heart conditions? What of all the people that try and lead as normal and as independent lives as possible, damning ourselves to other people's disbelief in the process? As ever before, the wheelchair remains the visual index and indicator of disability, not just a convenient shorthand for parking spaces and toilets, and no other visible or invisible evidence will be as compelling.

Of course, we're going over old ground here, and all of it triggered by a man who was slightly too drunk to really be aware how much hurt he was causing. We can cut him some slack because of the alcohol, but I believe last night's conversation to be the drunken voicing of an opinion he holds even when he's sober. The drink merely loosened his tongue, holding back the social safeguards that prevent him from saying it at any other time. Be that as it may, we've all experienced the same attitude from people who are not only entirely sober, but who really should know better.

It wouldn't have been too much of an admission of error to say "okay, that's how it's worded in law? I didn't realise" and let the argument drop. But the considerable arrogance required to continue to insist upon a judgment made using "their understanding" or "their definition" of the concept belies a thorough unwillingness to adjust their worldview on the grounds of new evidence expounded by someone who knows more about it than they do. It's a resolute and unfaltering insistance that their understanding is entirely correct, and it's the worst kind of head-in-the-sand reticence to adjust their view. It's as if we can teach them nothing, and their perfect and unassailable worldview has left no space for us.

It ends like this: anyone willing to argue their definition of disability, thereby showing exactly how much it varies from the agreed-upon legal definition, should - and in my case, will - shortly become infinitely more familiar with the definitions of words like "ignorant". And then, just maybe, "discrimination".

On Assisted Suicide

As part of my series of articles featuring things I’d rather think about than the Highway Code, today we turn our attention to the “assisted suicide” debate. This entry won’t be funny, but it will be brutally honest – I think the subject matter both demands and deserves it. The idea has been kicked about for decades, but has picked up speed since Debbie Purdy, who has Multiple Sclerosis, won the right to have the law clarified. This will make it clear whether members of her, and everyone else’s, family will be sent to prison if they accompany their loved one to Switzerland to die in a Dignitas clinic.

Ms Purdy says that if her husband cannot accompany her for fear of imprisonment, she will have to make the journey by herself while she is still able. This will involve going to Switzerland far sooner than she would if her husband was able to accompany her. Simply, decriminalising assisted suicide would give Ms Purdy a longer life, and more time with her husband, who she plainly loves very much. She has fought for a long time even to secure a promise of clarification of the law, and the eventual decision will bring about an almost unprecedented change in the treatment of serious and terminal illnesses, and in the life of every single resident of the United Kingdom.

As it stands, Dignitas enables members to travel with whomever they choose to a country where physician-assisted suicide is legal, provides them with an apartment in which to spend their last moments, and prescribes a strong dose of a barbiturate to send the patient to sleep then bring about death within half an hour or so. On top of treating terminally ill patients, they also assist those whose health problems provide so much pain and indignity that they no longer wish to continue living. Apparently, that accounts for quite a few people. Most of Dignitas’ members join and then never contact the group again. Very few people choose to go through to the eventual conclusion.

At present, UK laws prevent medical professionals from administering so much as a dose of painkillers if it is likely to hasten the patient’s death. This explains why, when my own grandfather was dying of secondary liver cancer in 2003, the nurses took away his morphine drip four hours before he actually passed. Since that day – when I was 16, and saw all this played out in front of me – I’ve been angry at the nurses for doing that. They assured me that he wasn’t really ‘in there’ any more, that he wasn’t suffering, but why should I believe them?

He’d been ill in various ways since the previous September, and was diagnosed with cancer in the October – his wife overhead his doctors discussing his prognosis, and distinctly heard them say “I wouldn’t give him until Christmas”. Nearly seven months later, after rounds of chemo that even his doctors knew were pointless, he grew weaker and less inclined to fight, got taken into hospital, and died on the 1st of May. His family – my family – watched him change from an upright, dignified man into one who spoke in tired wheezes, seemed to grow smaller every day, and was compelled to meet visitors in his pyjamas. He may have had five months more than his doctors wanted to promise him, but he never once said that he’d valued, or even wanted, them. His doctors may have provided extra time, but it proved to merely prolong the pain, the needles, the countless pills, the waiting for the inevitable.

I can’t speak for him, but I can speak for myself. Even then I knew that there was no way I’d want my family – including the husband I hadn’t met and the kids I haven’t conceived – to watch me fade, listen to the sighs of someone reduced to a little shell full of pain, to wonder every day, ‘is it today?’ Precisely two years after my grandfather’s diagnosis, five years ago this October, I had the accident that caused my neuropathy. Since then, I’ve come to understand how it is to be in so much pain that you can’t move, but can’t lie still either; to be exhausted just from trying to cook dinner; to have no interest in anything but crying, pills and sleep. I’ve had conversations with perfectly healthy people who’ve told me my life’s “grim”, who’ve said they don’t know what they’d do if it happened to them, who’ve said they’d prefer to be dead. Some days, so would I, but I have things to do first.

In spite of the stubbornness and resilience, I have admitted to myself that one day the pain will prove to be too much, borne for too long. When that day comes, I will be comforted by the knowledge that I am not powerless and patronised, that I can gain control of my recalcitrant body once and for all simply by talking to a sympathetic doctor. I may choose not to do so. The knowledge that I could will be enough.

I don’t really want to go to die in a faceless concrete Swiss tower block, but at the moment that’s the only option available to people in the same situation. People often opine that they want to die at home, in their own bed, not in a hospital surrounded by strangers. I’m not sure either way, don’t mind much so long as it happens quickly, but I can see why people long to have their family around them, and the comfort of their own home. The best thing the Government can do right now is gauge the opinions of the people it affects – not the healthy people who view it as a means to commit a legitimate murder, not the religious types who think that life is a sacred gift, however meaningless and devoid of humanity that life is, but the people who want a dignified and swift exit.

From some of the near-hysterical ravings of its opponents, one could conclude that the Government was trying to introduce mandatory euthanasia at age 50. But the reality is far from it – a choice must be made and who, in their heart of hearts, wants to lose their faculties one by one, become singly or doubly incontinent, be in horrible pain, become unable to take part in activities that have provided endless pleasure in years gone by, and know it is happening? Even if one’s mind lets go to the point where there is no recollection of a healthy past, no self-concept, what kind of life is that?

Both sides of the argument talk about dignity, quality of life, control, ethics – in the end, the decision is nothing more than a personal choice. It is a choice that we can make whether assisted suicide is legalised or not – it’s not hard to find an effective means of ending your own life. That’s the reason that you won’t be sold more than two packs of over-the-counter painkillers in this country. But, as so few people understand, this is not a quick or easy way out. Far from knocking them back with some vodka and going to sleep, an overdose will lead to days spent in the grip of multiple organ failure, while your family stand around wondering what they did wrong. If they paid for any of the pills you swallow, they’ll be in front of a judge before they’ve even begun to grieve properly.

What’s needed now is discussion – in Parliament, between ministers and the sick and dying, between doctors, between couples and within families. Thus far, my fiancé has entirely refused to acknowledge the subject, despite my obvious feelings on the debate. His reason for burying his head so deeply in the sand is the conversation “upsets” him; he “doesn’t want to think about” my ultimate demise. I can’t blame him for being squeamish, because it’s certainly not a thought process you approach with much relish, but talking about it is, I suspect, infinitely less upsetting than watching your wife gasp her last, plainly in incredible pain, and being powerless to relieve her suffering. Assisted suicide is an act of mercy, no less than what a doctor or nurse does during any other day in their career. The real enemy is silence and hypocrisy; people take their dog to be put down when it is old, ill and suffering, but cannot grant the same compassion to the people they love more. This isn’t selfish or unfeeling, it’s human. And our humanity is what necessitates the freedom to make our choice.

How Jeremy Clarkson Killed Feminism

Today, the editor of the London Times has seen fit to dedicate three full pages to an article about the sorry state of feminism in the UK in 2009. Apparently, every last woman feels pressured to be a thin, hairless, vacant, complacent, eager-to-please sex toy for a man who has been bought up to feel nothing but ingratitude and further selfish greed. Apparently, some have already caved under the pressure and adopted this role, possibly fuelled by a desperate need for acceptance. So, whose fault is it? Something’s gone wrong, so someone must be responsible, or should at least be nominated as scapegoat du jour. And, true to form, it has become clear that our oppressors are no less than the editors of men’s magazines and Jeremy Clarkson. And there was me thinking he just did Top Gear…

It just goes to show how wrong I was. Far from being a motoring journalist with a near-the-knuckle sense of humour and some 20 years’ experience, it appears that Mr. Clarkson and his colleagues are pornographers of the worst kind. The article opines, “whether it’s the bikini-clad models sprawled over the latest Porsche or the rolling laddish commentary on birds and wives, the Top Gear presenter is high on the feminists’ hitlist.” Really? Well! Perhaps the author has been watching a different Top Gear to me or, more probably, she hasn’t been watching it at all. Over the last seven weeks’ worth of TG, I can’t recall seeing a single girl draped over anything – only the daft ‘glamour model’ of a few weeks previous and an ironically inappropriate female pallbearer in swimwear. The only things I can recall even being said about the admirable Mrs. Clarkson is that she won’t drive anything with less than 200bhp and that she owns a Caterham, both of which make her a far more admirable woman than the one who produced the borderline-libellous opinion piece that inspired this rant. We know more about the Stig than we do about the presenters’ – and vicariously the production team’s – attitude to women.

It could be that the journalist in question simply doesn’t understand how the motor industry works, or that she genuinely does believe that Jeremy Clarkson really does personally place a blonde in a bikini on the bonnet of every car costing more than £30,000 (but not Porsches – you’d slide straight off anything but a Cayenne and a Panamera, and there’s no particular reason you’d want to drape yourself over either of those). This is doubtful. What is certain is that she really doesn’t like lads’ magazines. By this I mean publications such as Nuts or Zoo or FHM – or the equivalents for our overseas readers – not Asian Babes. Generally, the former have infinitely higher production values than the latter, and no Reader’s Wives section. But many writers, the Times’ correspondent included, make no such division. Their reaction to lads’ magazines is sometimes almost Victorian in its intensity - too many women gasp and faint in coils when confronted with the evidence of their gender.

But why should some boobs cause a scandal in 2009? Women no longer lie back and think of England – which is just as well – and we all know what goes where and, more importantly, why. And, if we’re honest, where else it could go beforehand, and where they’d like it to go next time. This is just the world we live in – every era in recent history has had writers to complain about moral decay and sundry social disgraces, and to hearken back to the ‘good old days’ that never actually existed. No, our forebears did not permit such open and obvious depictions of sexuality as we see now, but in turn we have effective contraception, Equal Rights legislation, and a society that permits free discussion, enabling women to make demands of their men. Plainly, neither men nor women should have to submit to demands that make them uncomfortable, but we do at least have the right to talk over the subject.

Once upon a time, I would be mildly offended when my boyfriend’s mates referred to me as “your missus” – I had worked hard at school and University, just as I work hard when writing here, and was keen to observe recognition in my own right. The tingle of annoyance would be only slightly assuaged when they assured him “you’ve done well there”. But I came to realise, as all women should, that for the absolute majority this was simply a conversation that employed the available, socially appropriate vocabulary for the participants – 30-something Essex men standing in a pub, pint in hand, talking about their beloved girlfriends will only use a selection of the words from which they could choose. This says more about the emotional muteness and insularity of the British male than it does about sexism or society in general, and the only way to change this is to be the thought police; stealing inside the heads of adolescents and telling them which words they may and may not use. And this is immoral – freedom of speech may be a qualified right, but it is a right just the same.

The real issue with feminism in 2009 are the blurred lines, the attacking of the wrong targets. For every Dove-style “real beauty” advertisement, there is a Wonderbra-esque commercial encouraging young women to fake it. A women’s magazine may publish articles enabling their readers to dress in a manner that flatters their build and body shape, but flick to the back and there are still pages of ads for cosmetic surgery clinics. A technique invented to help disfigured airmen after WWII has been hijacked and employed to give some women an unfair advantage – the rich are ‘perfect’, the poor are natural. Some women – hopefully not the majority – live in perpetual fear or denial of impending grey hairs, wrinkles, blemishes and imperfections. Who for? Whose opinion are they more concerned about – their own, that of other women, or that of men?

Feminism is what its adherents make it, and may be let down by a bra-burning, man-hating image. Feminism as many people understand it may not appear very appealing to a girl with expensive shoes and a high-maintenance haircut, but it's important to understand where you stand on issues affected by sexism. It’s certainly not right for your boss to make suggestive comments, and nor should it be acceptable for a woman to be paid less than a male colleague doing a comparable job. But is it wrong to want to make your partner content through sexual means? Is it wrong to make yourself look good when you’re going out? No more wrong than it is for them to make you breakfast or take you to the hospital if you’re ill – none but a fool would argue that a man was “breaching his principles” by doing so.

Feminism is nothing to do with makeup, padded underwear or being offended by trivial, throwaway comments. Feminism is what you mind tells you to do in any given situation – never mind The Rules or any similar prescriptive dross penned by a woman who’s never met you. If you’re worried about sexism, you have enough feminism in your mind to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. Forget what you've been told about not accepting a date for Saturday is it's Wednesday when he calls, and forget sitting around weepily if he doesn't call at all. Don't let yourself be taken for a fool and don't hang around in a relationship where someone's going to get hurt. Don't deny yourself the pleasure of looking good and being good, eating what you want, taking time for yourself or not doing what you're told. That's not feminism, that's just good sense.

"Is There Anything You'd Like To Disclose?"

I should be used to it by now, really. Everywhere I go, I'm asked what happened to me. Some days I can even be bothered to muster a polite answer. Other times, I find the enquiry rude, depressing and sometimes insulting. Wednesday was just such an occasion.

I'd been called to a large hospital near me for an interview - even though the position would have required an awful lot of emotional detachment, there was the potential to be part of a department that really helps people. And that, in essence, is why I apply for five or more NHS vacancies a week.

So I turn up after an hour on the bus in 30°C heat and wait in reception for a girl to come and tell me they're ready for me. She's on the phone when I arrive, but finishes and comes through to where I'm waiting.

"Miss T*****?"
Yes.
"Ooh, have you hurt your leg?"
No.
[brief confused silence] "Okay, the team are running a little late, so it'll be about a 10-minute wait."

So I sit, trying not to think about how undignified I feel, trying instead to concentrate on how professional and employable I'd felt fifteen minutes before. Just as I'm getting really very annoyed with the woman, she comes back. The interview, it transpires, is taking place in a room on the second floor, not the ground floor where I was currently standing. She's got the good sense to ask if I want to use the lift, so off we go.

While waiting for the lift, she starts again: "So, how did you hurt your leg, then? Was it recent?" So I'm honest and explain exactly what happened, and say that the treatment I received from the doctors and nurses I'd seen is why I want to work for the NHS - it might not have actually fixed me, but they had a fair crack at it, and I wanted to see if I could give something back. This seems to satisfy her, and she agrees - it was when she was in hospital having her tibia pinned back together that she decided it seemed like a good place to work.

Then I'm ushered into the interview room and introduced to a woman from HR and a nurse who I'm positive spoke to my family the morning my Grandad died. Didn't like her much then, not any more keen now. The questions begin: what's my proudest achievement? Finishing my degree in spite of spending all but the first two weeks of it in horrible pain. The job can be quite physical; am I up to it? Wouldn't have wasted everyone's time applying if I wasn't.

Then, the one that really stung: "I see from your application that you had a fortnight off last year following surgery - is there anything you'd like to disclose?"

Well, no, actually, no there bloody isn't. But that isn't the right answer. Instead, you have to tell your interviewers things you didn't even want to tell your family, that you didn't even want to accept yourself: the operation didn't work, my doctors aren't going to investigate further surgical options, and no, I'm not going to get any better. It's always worth pointing out, too, that I didn't miss a single day of university or my last job due to it, except when I was recovering from my last operation. I'd never missed a coursework deadline, never made pathetic excuses - this would be the same as letting my own health get the better of me, and that simply shouldn't be how it works.

And yet, on the way home, mulling this over in my mind, it hit me. Why on Earth would I want to spend my time working for people who seem more worried about my health problems than those of the seriously ill patients they treat? In what way would this job provide any peace of mind, any reliable source of income? Every time I had an appraisal it would be brought up; I may well even not get the full contract at the end of my probation period because of it. If I did well, I'd be succeeding in spite of my health. Plainly the department need a reliable administrator who isn't going to ring in ill every other week, but I don't, I never have.

The law as it stands says that they cannot ask me if I intend to have children, or if I am married. They cannot ask me how old I am. But they can ask dispiriting questions with complete impunity, an act which in essence sabotages the entire interview - how am I supposed to be confident and professional, how am I supposed to sell myself, when I'm constantly reminded that I'm flawed, I'm not as good as their other candidates?

They're going to call me tomorrow or the day after to tell me I haven't got the job. Frankly, it's a waste of their time and money - I already know I haven't. But I suspect it may be just as well. I want to work for an employer that's pleased to have me there and values what I have to offer, rather than seeing me as a potential absentee or a new statistic for their Equality and Diversity co-ordinator. If my employer chooses to identify me by one body part alone, let it be my brain, not my leg.

How Hard Can It Be?

So it's decided; in precisely 15 days from today, I'm phoning up a company named Automatic Pass and asking them to teach me to drive. But, like everything I do, there is no way that this venture will be by any means easy.

I will only ever be able to qualify for an automatic licence, because the nerve damage in my leg means I can't depress even the lightest clutch to anything approaching biting point. So, all this means I have to email the DVLA and explain that my Central Nervous System has developed a misfire (doing it next, after this), which means they have to put the information code 106 on the back of my licence: "restricted to vehicles with automatic transmission". Of course, I could just not tell them, but this counts as endorsement code LC40, driving a vehicle having failed to notify a disability. Not only will they put anywhere between three and six points on my shiny new licence if they find out, they will also fine me £1000, and I don't blame them.

The other part of driving whilst under the influence of nerve damage is the choice of car available to me: aforementioned automatics like the 1.2 litre Fiat 500 which I've set my heart on in spite of its minuscule 86bhp - the only model of 500 Fiat make with the option of specifying an automatic gearbox, plus they cost only about £9000; or semi-automatic (flappy-paddle) boxes commonly found in high-spec Aston Martins and Lamborghinis, and I'm fairly confident no-one's stupid enough to sell me one of those. Still, look how cool the 500 is! It's definitely one of those cars that you end up naming, almost in spite of yourself - I'll be taking suggestions soon:

If you're still reading after my hackneyed first attempt at motoring journalism, thank you. Lesser readers would have dropped out paragraphs ago. Funny enough, reading also forms my entire participation and preparation for learning to drive; so far this week I've learnt that you have to put your handbrake on every time you stop in your automatic, and that you shouldn't do left-foot braking if you haven't got a clutch - apparently this can result in people using their accelerator and brake at the same time, with their left and right foot respectively, which is no good for all the complex stuff under the bonnet. Perhaps not quite as bad as putting the car into reverse while you're moving forwards, which is best done in the car of someone you don't like, but still definitely not to be advised.

It was while engaged in my customary journalist-style research that I made a discovery that quickly reduced me to the kind of red-faced apoplexy more associated with Daily Mail readers. My copy of the AA-authored Learn To Drive confidently states that qualified drivers have "as much right to be on the road as a bicycle or horse rider."

Now, I am inclined to disagree. If you've paid to learn to drive, then paid to take your theory and then your practical test, then paid to buy a car, then paid VAT on that, then paid to tax and insure your car as the law dictates, then bought fuel to make your car move, then paid 100 per cent tax on that, then taken your car for its MOT and service and paid for any repairs arising from that, plus the ubiquitous "sundries", how does someone who went to Halfords and bought a bike or bought a horse from wherever it is you buy horses from have as much right as you to be on the road that you paid your road tax for? When I'm paying road tax, I intend to divide the surface area of all the roads in Britain by the number of people paying said tax to give the size of my personal piece, then I shall go and find an appropriately-sized stretch I like the look of and stake my claim to it. If you turn up with a bicycle I'll let your tyres down, and if you bring a horse, I shall have it shot.

And this, you see, is the one reason for me not to learn to drive: I am quite astoundingly opinionated, and the very pedantic kind of perfectionst that uses the word "actually" in the same way that medieval knights used a mace and flail. If I do not pick driving up within my first three lessons I will doubtless be suicidal with disappointment, and if I get it wrong at any point I'll be killed. And this is when the other code soon to appear on the back of my photo licence becomes so crucial: next to the bit where it says I can drive a tractor, I intend to request that the DVLA puts on the code 115: "organ donor". My blog and my opinions may be inconsequential, but at least my organs will be useful to someone else.

Cry God For England, Sophie and Mr. Owens

When I was 14, I took a lot of crap for the way I chose to present myself, the way I chose to live. Sometimes there was physical violence, but mostly the trouble was composed of stupid questions designed to offend, shouted comments in the corridors and the streets, wildly incorrect assertions made loudly in front of a class of 30, and, on one occasion, a forty-minute exploration of my identity and lifestyle.

It was a Year 9 Graphics class, taught by my favourite teacher of all time, Mr. Owens. The session was intended to be a chance for the group to practice and improve their freehand design skills, but instead the first 50 minutes ran like this: five minutes’ briefing, five minutes’ quiet designing, and then forty minutes of interrogation, supposition and, eventually, pure demented fantasy. Then, the last 20 minutes, the only 20 minutes of my education that I actually enjoyed: Mr. Owens made a speech.

He was angry, apocalyptically so; more livid than I’ve ever seen anyone. As the conversation had grown more out of control, the volume rose, and Sir had heard every word. As it transpires, Mr. Owens had enjoyed a misspent youth. He, too, had adopted the Black Aesthetic and spent a large amount of the early 1980s at the Batcave. He, too, had faced up to the same rumours, misunderstandings, and blatant lies. His tirade was the finest piece of speaking that it’s ever been my extreme good fortune to hear.

He began, dripping with quiet menace, and quickly accelerated to full-on red-faced fury: "How dare you? How DARE YOU?!" He defended me by saying that if no-one tried anything new and different, we'd all still be living in caves. He asked what possible business my personal life was of theirs, why they thought they had the right to comment and censure, whether they thought everyone had to be like them. Then, riding high on a wave of indignation and triumph, he let out the revelation that, in his youth, he had been like me too. This defence went on at some considerable volume for the remaining 20 minutes of the hour and ten minute lesson. At the beginning I'd been on the verge of tears due to the ferocity of the accusations; fifteen minutes later I was welling up still. I'd never believed that anyone, let alone this wonderful, eccentric teacher, could put this much effort into relieving the relentless aggravation that made my senior school years so memorable. He may never read this, but I don't care; Sir made me believe that I could carry on. I remember it still.

Nearly ten years later, I've come to realise that the more things change, the more they stay the same. When I was 14, my friends and I often discussed how far this discrimination, this intolerance, this abuse could go. We thought that one day it would go too far and someone would be killed; during some attacks, we believed it could be us. After someone had died, though, we thought something would change. We believed that the publicity generated by a murder would create a change in society, that the behaviour that had plagued us for so long would no longer be appropriate or tolerated. When someone dies, we thought, all this will end; there will be no more of it.

Well, we were half-right.

Sophie Lancaster died in August 2007, and the papers made much of the case. Since then, nothing has changed. Earlier on today, I heard someone like me recount a tale that chilled me to the bone: he is disabled and walks with a stick, like me. On his way home a little while ago, he was stopped and assaulted by six men for the same reason that Sophie and the rest of us were. During the assault, that hospitalised him for two days, he was told "if you don't want this you gotta change". When he went to the police, he was told that his appearance was "provocative" and was "asking for the wrong sort of attention".

Why is this acceptable? This is exactly the same response that I got from my useless, PE-gorilla Head of Year when I was 14 - it was infuriating and obstructive then, and it hasn't improved with age.

After Sophie died, the Internet and alt.magazines were full of horror stories and battle scars: the girl forced against a car and sexually assaulted in broad daylight because some idiot got the wrong message from her short skirt, fishnets and boots; the kids pushed into traffic; the 12-year-old attacked by a group of girls from her school, cornered on the stairs and made to apologise for her newfound identity and beg her tormentors not to break her legs; the young mother assaulted on the Underground while her little boy watched, strapped into his buggy and shouting "please stop hurting my mummy!"; the newly transferred schoolgirl stabbed in the eye and almost blinded for being on the wrong side of a divide she didn't understand; the student who was beaten into a coma with a motorcycle helmet and then had his ear sliced off; the suicides of Nicola Raphael, Rachael Jarvis, Sam Leeson, Angie Fuller, Tempest Smith and Hannah Bond.

If this was any other social group, no-one would stand for it; it would be called racism, or homophobia, or disablism, or sexism, or ageism, or anything similar. The fact is, Mr. Owens was right: we have no reason to be ashamed. We don't owe anything to anyone, certainly not an explanation. Our private lives are nobody's business but our own. If no-one experimented, if no-one left the cave, you wouldn't even be reading this: there'd be no Internet, no electricity. Sometimes it's all you can do to hold your ground, relying on the knowledge that this too shall pass. Mr. Owens was self-assured, confident in his path, buoyed by the strength of his convictions: he knew he was right. All I know is, it's time for a change.

It's no good, I can't do it.

I can't wear a big white puffy dress to my wedding. I can't wear a fingertip veil, or a chapel-length train, or those stupid white satin stiletto heels that all wedding-shoe companies ever appear to be producing. While we're on the subject, I can't wear white satin at all - even if I did want to, it's ill-advised with an arse this size. I can't stick diamantes on every available surface until I look like a low-budget footballer's wife. I can't develop a serious eating disorder just to fit in a Size 10 dress, nor can I spend more than a grand on anything I'll only be wearing for eight hours.

I can't go to a poxy bar with a load of screaming, Lambrini-infused girls and watch a disinterested and over-oiled male stripper jiggle for money. I can't stagger from the bar into the tacky white stretch limo with sticky carpets and spend the rest of the night cruising Southend sodding Sea Front flashing random passers-by. I can't be bothered to provide personalised favours to every guest, or a free bar, or those horrible little hors d'oevres made with undefinable meat. I can't pay a sweaty, leering DJ £500 to spin Come On Eileen and Oops Upside Your Head for 300 of my closest friends. I can't pretend to my Italian in-laws that I was a good Catholic girl all along, or promise a bishop that I'll raise my babies in his faith.

I can't stare dreamily into the middle distance as an embittered, failed fashion photographer Vaselines his lens for one more soft-focus close-up. I can't order white tie-side underwear that read "Mrs A********" on the back in MORE DIAMANTES because I'm not going to be Mrs A, or indeed Mrs Anybody Else. I can't bear to look at one more website full of sheer white babydoll nighties just because the store owners think that's what "bridal lingerie" means. In fact, I won't be wearing white anything, because that'd be a lie, and not even a little lie. And by the date of my wedding, it'll be a decade-old lie, too.

What I can do is make a wedding that actually resembles and reflects the identities of me and my future husband. I can stand in a wedding dress shop and argue with a snotty sales assistant about whether a burgundy bridesmaid dress is an adequate replacement for the white monstrosities that she keeps waving at me. I can choose ridiculous platforms, because TraumaBloke is 6' 2" and doesn't have even the slightest complex about it. I can invite a supporting cast of drunken metalheads and even more drunk college lecturers and not feel remotely ashamed about it. I can keep my own name, in addition to my bloke's, and happily spend the rest of my life spelling it for people.

I can walk down the aisle to Metallica if I choose, and put on exactly what songs I like at the reception. I can be given away by my male best mate, who'll be unshaven and wearing a kilt. I can wear scarlet lipstick for my first kiss and not feel the faintest trace of remorse. I can demand three tiers of chocolate fudge cake at the reception, or fifty cupcakes, or a bloody great chocolate brownie if I please. I can wear a tea-length dress to show off my legs if I decide I want to, not caring if my new Catholic Aunties faint in unison as I step into the church, and I won't mind that I can't afford this one, which is Stephanie Allin and costs over £2,000:




I can't - or, possibly, won't - spend one of the most important days of my life pretending to be something I'm not just to make my family, his family or the Pope feel better. I don't need acres of tulle to make me feel like a bride. What I will do that day is the same I have done on every other day in the last 23 years in general and the last 10 years specifically - I will do exactly what I feel is right for me and my fella. It's been too long to stop now.